Conor Harrington

Portfolio

I’m just back from a lil trip to Lisbon to do a spot of painting and of course sample their fine wines and foods.. mmmm. This was a piece I painted over in Alcantara during the week. The wall was nice and smooth so I could really move the paint around and do some nice smearing.

I had planned on writing ‘All this talk of blood and slaying has put me off my tea’ as quoted in Alice In Wonderland but I blocked in all the text and it didn’t sit right so I started erasing the letters slowly but surely til I was happy with the balance but all I was left with was ‘my ea’. Form over function, blah blah blah.

There was also a discussion about my placement on the wall as I was marking out the horse. I had to go over a tag, which I never like doing but it was either that or a chrome. A discussion ensued regarding graffiti ethics (blah blah blah) but I found it funny given my choice of land-grabbing colonial imagery that here we were in lisbon discussing the same thing. Maybe I’m the colonialist coming into a new country and imposing myself over others. Fuck it, I had a lot of fun though.

So everyones off to the polls in Ireland to vote in a similar shower of chancers to run the country. Newsnight on the BBC lastnight had a feature on the elections, featuring the obligatory shot of homeless people. Yeah BBC, everyone is homeless in Ireland. Anyway, I haven’t been following things too close so I’m not sure who I’d vote for if I lived at home but I reckon the Rubberbandits would get the job done. They’re certainly not homeless either.

In May 2010 I set out on a trip to Israel and Palestine with film-maker Andy Telling. We spent a week painting in both Tel Aviv and Bethlehem. My work deals with conflict and tension so I thought this would be an interesting place to go to.

Andy has been working away for months on the film, both editing and producing all the music. Here are the fruits of his labour.

I went to the book signing of fashion editor and photographer Frederic Chaubin’s new Taschen monograph last night. For CCCP (Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed) Frederic spent 7 years documenting Soviet architecture from all corners of the former empire, a style of architecture almost forgotten in the West. The book has a strong and powerful design aesthetic, a fitting tribute to these monstrous and monumental buildings.